4th. Sunday of Advent (C)
(Micah
5:1-4a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-44)
It has been noted from very early times in the Church that
John the Baptist, while still in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, ‘leapt for
joy’ at the presence of Jesus being carried by Mary whereas Elizabeth responded
to the presence of Mary:
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s
greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy
Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me that the mother
of my Lord should come to me?
Why did not Elizabeth -- together with her own as yet
unborn son -- rejoice at the presence of Mary’s baby which she acknowledges as being
‘her Lord’, rather than at the immediate presence of Mary herself?
As of old, many of our Protestant brethren still feel jealous
for the honour of Jesus; but we Catholics should rather gratefully rejoice in
and learn from the sublime truths contained in St. Luke’s gospel account of The
Visitation.
Listen again carefully to Elizabeth’s words of greeting to
Mary; her first words– at the instigation of her own child leaping for joy at
Jesus’ proximity -- are words with reference to Mary as mother of the Child she
was carrying
Most blessed are you among women
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
But then she goes on to speak adult to adult, woman to
woman, Israelite to Israelite:
Dear People of God, the whole story of God’s dealings with
His Chosen People started with God making a promise to Abraham that he and his
wife Sarah would have a child despite their old age. Abraham believed that promise of God, he
believed you might say against all medical probabilities and despite the deep
disappointments he and Sarah had suffered repeatedly over many years because of
their childlessness, a state so alien to Israel’s traditions. Abraham glorified God by putting more trust
in His spoken promise than in his own years of bitter experience and the no
doubt snide words of other Israelites not above commenting on their lack of
offspring. St. Paul tells us that such
trust in God:
Was credited to his
(Abraham’s) account as righteousness. (Romans
4:3)
Thus, he was to be the father of
all who believe, so that to them also righteousness may be credited. (Romans 4:11)
He is our father in the sight of
God, in Whom he believed, Who gives life to the dead and calls into being what
did not exist. (Romans 4:17)
That is how God’s People came into being, through FAITH,
and that is why Elizabeth, herself rejoicing in the fulfilment of a promise of
God, greeted Mary personally saying:
Blessed are you WHO BELIEVED that
what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.
St. Augustine puts it very clearly when he writes that Mary
conceived Jesus in her heart by faith before she conceived Him physically in
her womb; words which are an echo of the teaching of Jesus Himself (Luke
11:27-28):
A woman from the crowd called out
and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that carried You and the breasts at which
You nursed.” He replied, “Rather,
blessed are those who hear the word of God and (believing) observe it.”
And so, dear People of God, we who follow St. Luke’s lead and
join with Elizabeth in her greeting to Mary, are brought back to Jesus
immediately and with deepened conviction, for Mary’s faith is in the miraculous
Gift of God’s own Son which no human
mind could then conceive without God’s most special grace … given to Joseph and
now to Elizabeth thanks to the closeness of their spiritual relationship with
Mary. Give thanks to God, dear Catholic
people, for the wondrous beauty of His truth!
And how much we need Mary’s example and Elizabeth’s
spiritual awareness this Christmas time where all the celebrations seem to
trumpet but one thing: GIFTS manifesting human GOOD WILL!! And
people say, “Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?” In our modern western world God’s Gift to
man is forgotten, ignored, while so many people publicly rejoice about their
own giving-gifts-goodness, without the need of any God interfering in their
lives.
However, Mary has another supremely important lesson for us
to appreciate in this Advent time.
God the Father Himself, by His Spirit, made Mary of
Nazareth one with Jesus through faith, love, and body-and-blood physicality; in
no way are they to be separated. Mary is now living eternally in heaven for the
glory of God, and her prayerful influence on earth is totally for the glory of her
dear Son in the hearts of all men, so that those well-known words of Jesus:
What God has joined
together, let no man separate
are most important and significant for our considerations
today.
In Luke’s story of the Visitation of Our Lady, Mary is
shown as a figure, a foreshadowing, of the Church: Mary is, by Jesus’ gift, our heavenly mother;
the Church is our spiritual mother on earth, for as Mary gave birth to Jesus,
the Church gives birth to disciples of Jesus who are born from her proclamation
of His Good News or birth from her womb -- the baptismal font -- by the power
of the Holy Spirit bequeathed to her by Jesus; Mary is praised in Scripture as
‘she who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled’ while
Mother Church ‘unfailingly adheres to the faith … delivered once for all to the
saints’. We have to recognize this mystery
of the real oneness between Jesus and Mary, and also the spiritual oneness
between Mary and Mother Church; and we should learn from St. Luke to reverence
the Church as Elizabeth reverenced Mary; it is only the devil who works to
separate what God has joined.
Jesus has promised to be with His Church to the end of time;
He has given His Holy Spirit in fullness to His Church, to guide her into all
truth; when His disciples gather together as Church Jesus is infallibly in
their midst; and He has promised that He will defend her against the Devil’s
attempts to destroy her. As we heard in
the second reading that:
For this reason, when He came
into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body
You prepared for Me; holocausts and sin offerings You took no delight in. Then I said, ‘As is written of Me in the
scroll, Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.’”
The Son of God took a human body from Mary in order to do
His Father’s will on earth for our salvation; so, now in heaven at the right
hand of the Father, He still uses His body to continue His Father’s work: but not
the fleshly one -- which is, as I have said, at His Father’s side in heavenly
glory -- but a mystical body, His Church, of which He is the Head.
Human beings, even those most highly placed in the Church,
even those subsequently recognized as Saints, are weak, and at times may
manifest those weaknesses, failings, and even sins. Mother Church is greater than any individual,
even greater than Mary who is a member of the Church, and as such is of the Church, in the Church, not above
her. And so, we must reverence Mother
Church given to us for our salvation by the Lord Who is her Master and
ours. He uses His Church, our earthly
Christian-and-Catholic Mother, to guide us and bless us; and He never allows the
inherent human weakness of her individual members to betray His divine Truth
committed to her for protection and proclamation for the salvation of mankind.
People of God learn from Elizabeth; she was, as the Gospel
tells us, ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ and the Holy Spirit led her to cry out:
And how does this happen to me
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Reverence and love, honour and delight in, Mary, now Queen
of Heaven but ever our deeply-concerned Mother and occasional visitant; and in
the same spirit pray and stand up for, serve and trust in, Mother Church, not
because of her earthly pomp, prestige or influence, but because she is the
instrument Christ wills to use, she is His Mystical Body; He is her Head and His
Spirit is her very life …. Such is the purpose of God that, as loving and
obedient children of her He has chosen to serve His purposes of salvation, His
Spirit will fill our lives and form us ever more and more into the likeness of
Him Who is to come, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who is our present hope
and will be our future reward.
No comments:
Post a Comment